For the first known time since February 2020, courts in 2022 fined five individuals several weeks average wages for trying to import religious literature. Border guards seized the books at Shymkent Airport and at a border crossing from Uzbekistan. A Shymkent Airport border guard insisted that his service had not imposed the two literature seizures at the airport and subsequent fines. "We didn t confiscate any books, we just took them away and handed them on to the police to be examined," he said.
Forum 18: KAZAKHSTAN: Fines, bans for offering religious materials for sale forum18.org - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from forum18.org Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
9 April 2021
Felix Corley, Forum 18
Courts fined at least 17 people in 2021 for distributing religious literature, texts, videos, audio and items in places and ways the regime declares illegal under its compulsory religious censorship. Most fines were of three weeks average wages. People don t have the right to distribute religious materials in any form whatsoever, whether text, video or audio, insists Kayrulla Kushkaliyev of Atyrau s Religious Affairs Department – which brought six prosecutions. The UN Human Rights Committee found an import ban on ten Jehovah s Witness publications violated Polat Bekzhan s rights.
Courts have fined at least 17 people in the first three months of 2021 for distributing religious literature, texts, videos, audio and religious items in places and ways the regime declares to be illegal under its compulsory religious censorship. Only one of the individuals, Council of Churches Baptist Nikolai Novikov – who was offering religious literature for f